5 Questions to Answer Before You Get Started Homesteading

Are you ready to get started with your homesteading lifestyle? It’s true, it offers numerous benefits including reduced monthly expenses, sustainable living, and a rewarding lifestyle. But before you get started there are five questions you need to answer.

1. How much space do you  have? – Homesteading doesn’t have to take up much space. Many urban homesteaders garden on their patio, roof, or in a small back yard. Take a look around you and evaluate how much space you have. Do you have enough room for what you want to grow?

2. Are animals allowed? If you’re interested in raising or keeping animals, it’s important to check your local zoning and ordinances first. Some communities don’t allow livestock to be kept. And some cities restrict the number or type of animal that you can keep. Even if you’re only interested in beekeeping, it’s important to know whether you will be able to do this where you live.

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3. Sustainability and systems – How will you make the most of your resources? For example, you might install a rain barrel to collect water for your garden. Can you use lumber and items you already have to build container gardens or a chicken coop?

4. What will you grow? The best advice is to grow what you eat. Make a list of the produce you buy most often at the supermarket. Cross off the items that don’t grow well in your area and review the list. Prioritize the list according to your available space.

5. What's the most important to you to start with? The best advice is to start small – There’s no need to run out and buy a hundred acres. You can start small with a few containers or a backyard garden. You can start a small bee colony or get a few chickens. Think about where you want to start and how quickly you want to grow your homesteading lifestyle. Think about what’s most important to you and what you can reasonably manage.

Starting homesteading is a fun and exciting project, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Taking the time to answer the 5 questions above, and prioritize, will make all the difference to your success.

Be sure to stay tuned, as next week, we’ll take a look at urban homesteading and offer some tips and ideas for bringing homesteading into your neighborhood - even if you don't live in the country.

The Many Financial Benefits of Homesteading

Homesteading may initially seem like an expensive hobby. After all, if you decide you’re going to raise chickens and begin using solar energy to power your home, both may require a significant investment. However, homesteading actually offers many financial benefits, some of which you may be quite surprised to learn.

Homestead Tax Advantages

Most states have homesteading laws and tax credits or advantages. In many cases, it’s a great way to save money on your property taxes. The homestead tax exemption essentially makes part of the value of your home exempt from property taxes. For example, if a property is worth $180,000 and is eligible for a $25,000 homestead tax exemption, then the property will only be taxed at $155,000. The amount of your homestead tax exemption varies according to state tax laws and the value of your home.

Sustainability Tax Credits and Savings

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Another way that homesteading can save you money is with sustainability and alternative energy savings. For example, in many states if you install solar energy panels, a geothermal system, or other energy-saving appliances, you may receive a tax credit. You also save money on your monthly energy bills and may even get a credit from the energy company if your solar cells produce more energy than you use. There are both federal and state alternative energy tax credits to review to see what you’re eligible for.

Saving On Groceries

Depending on the scale of your garden you can save anywhere from a few dollars a week to several hundred dollars a year on groceries. A simple herb garden can save money on buying dried or fresh herbs at the store. If you have land and can plant larger crops with an abundant yield, you can save hundreds each month. A package of carrot seeds costs less than five dollars and you can grow pounds and pounds of carrots with one bag of seed.  (See our Sustainable Gardening blog for more helpful gardening tips.)

Whether you want to save money or you’re simply looking for a way to live a more natural and rewarding lifestyle, homesteading offers a number of benefits. Next time we’ll take a look at why homesteading is good for the environment, so stay tuned!

The 3 Main Elements of Homesteading - Which Appeals Most to You?

While homesteading encompasses many skills and approaches, there are three common elements that most homesteaders practice. When beginning a homesteading lifestyle, it makes sense to choose one element and make it a priority.

Focus on improving your skills, systems, and practice. Integrate that element into your lifestyle and then expand on it by adding other lifestyle changes and homesteading skills. So what are these three main elements?

Growing strawberries (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1. Gardening – The first and perhaps most readily adopted element of homesteading is gardening. Gardening is something that you can do on a small scale or you can convert your entire back yard into a garden. Small container gardens and raised garden beds are often a good way to go if you’re not sure you’ll have the time to tend to your garden.

You can always add more containers or raised beds as you become more comfortable. The most important thing to remember about homestead gardening is to grow what you eat. If you don’t like broccoli, don’t grow it. If you love strawberries, then that’s a perfect crop to start with. Utilize sustainable gardening practices to maximize your use of space and minimize your impact on the environment.

Preserved food in Mason jars (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

2. Food preservation and preparation - The next component of homesteading is a natural progression from gardening. It’s the fine art of food preservation. We’re talking about canning, pickling, and making preserves. For example, let’s say that you love strawberries and your first year of gardening you had good success with your strawberry garden.

Your crop yielded a nice collection of strawberries and you enjoyed a few tasty desserts. This year you might triple your strawberry plants and instead of eating them all right away, or giving them away, you make strawberry preserves. You’ll now be able to enjoy your strawberries all year long. Learning to cook what you grow from scratch is more of an art than a science. Enjoy the process!

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

3. Animal husbandry – The third element of homesteading is animal husbandry, or raising animals. You might raise goats for goat milk and cheese. You could raise chickens for their eggs.

You can also venture into fish farms and aquaponics. This is a bigger step for some and you’ll have to check your local zoning ordinances to make sure it’s okay to raise livestock in your yard.

As you might suspect, when you begin homesteading there can be some significant financial benefits. In the next post next week, we’ll take a look at those benefits and provide some guidelines to help you save more money with homesteading.